


Brumous

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: Gen, Sylvie Christmas my ass Lumiere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 01:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9213530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: Sylvie sings sad songs and listens to bad poetry.Written for the prompt "brumous: grey skies and winter days"





	

There is something melancholic about winter, but it is not what everyone expects. It is not the darkness or the cold — these things do not, _could not_ , phase her. One would not guess from the woman’s air of sophistication, but when she had first come to this country she’d had nothing and no one; though it has been many decades since she’d had to wander the streets in the rags of a peasant, after experiencing such poverty it is difficult to complain about a _chill_ when wrapped in a fur coat.

Melancholy is not in the grey clouds or the strong winds, either. _I’ve had to restyle my hair three times today. It’s a pain!_ she may moan when asked why she wears such a sullen expression, but her vanity is only skin deep and the chill in Manhattan reaches one’s bones.

— Yet there is _something_.

She sings aching love songs to crowds of sweethearts, watches them huddle together for warmth against the speakeasy’s draft and exchange heartfelt gifts in spite of the hard times. Steam rises from mulled wine and Irish coffee and turns their cheeks a lively red. More people get engaged in the winter months — more on Christmas Eve than any other day of the year. It is a statistic she’s sure she’s read somewhere, but she knows it better from decades of lovestruck men begging that she sings _their_ special song when they pull out the ring, so that it will be an unforgettable proposal, so that thirty years on they will be able to look back on that night and recall it clear as day. She has a soft spot in her icy heart for lovers and fools, and so she never has it in her to refuse.

Still, it is melancholic.

She sings their love songs, and she feels more like an audience member _herself_ , watching a spectacle that she could never perform herself — not anymore. 

 _Marry me_ , a young man begs, knee bent before his lover. She observes from the stage, reminiscing. 

 _Marry me_ , a young man had once begged her, and she had said _yes_. She has promised her eternity to a ghost, and now she spends her days singing songs about what she cannot have. 

There is something melancholic about winter: everyone else has a hand to hold and she is left to remember when she did, too. 

… 

 _It’s too stuffy in here_ , she’d told the manager, _I’m going to get some fresh air. I’ll be outside if you need me_. 

It hadn’t been a lie, exactly. The speakeasy _is_  stuffy, but it is less the smoke that chokes her and more the atmosphere (the whole city smells like smoke; she couldn’t escape _this_  by stepping outside). Sylvie Lumiere leans against the brick wall, breathing in cold air and a more peaceful loneliness.

She closes her eyes and imagines a simpler world where he lives and he is _hers_. She would not find the winter so melancholy then; they would look up at the grey skies and smile, knowing that the cold weather only draws them closer. She would not need furs to keep warm. 

“I, uh, wanted ta’ say you’re really beautiful, miss,” a stammering voice interrupts her daydream. She turns her head to look at the stranger, a rather average looking man — perhaps in his early twenties — fiddling with a sheet of paper with his gloved hands. He has a nervous tremor, and she knows why without asking. It’s always the same. 

“I wrote a — er… a poem,” he says when she does not respond, lifting the sheet in front of his face. She raises an eyebrow, smiling to herself; how long has it been since one of them wrote her a _poem_? Quite an old romantic for such a young man. Thinking the smile is for him, he begins reciting the poem with newfound confidence. 

It is not what Sylvie would call _artistic_. What the man lacks in formal education he makes up for in tipsiness; he slurs his words, drops his _r’s_ , and makes some rather _well-meaning_  but unflattering comparisons, telling her her hair is grey _like an old woman’s_ , _like a cloudy, grey sky_ , in spite of her youth. He lowers the paper when he is done, and she stares, then frowns, a small, indignant frown.

“It’s silver,” she corrects, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.”

“’scuse me?”

“It’s not grey, sir, it’s silver.” 

Sylvie Lumiere had not waited so long to be _beautiful_  only to be compared to an old hag, well-meaning or not. 

The man slumps, crumpling the poem and stuffing it into the pocket of his worn beige coat. 

“That all you got ta’ say?”

“What were you expecting me to say?” 

“I dunno, I — I guess you could say if you feel the same.” 

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Y-Yeah, that’s, that’s true —”

Sylvie Lumiere has not protected her heart for so long to give it away to a drunken stranger, but she has a soft spot for lovers and fools, and so she smiles to soothe his embarrassment, offering her simplest explanation:  

“I’m afraid I gave my heart away a long time ago.”

The man opens his mouth to speak — perhaps to question why she does not wear a wedding band — but she cuts in. 

“But thank you — for the poem. It was very sweet,” or at least, it was _supposed_  to be.

“Ah… right.”

He shrugs his coat up on his skinny shoulders, and turns away. Sylvie sighs, a cloud of breath in the cold air, and hugs her arms around herself.

“Come inside for a drink.”

“But you said —”

“And I meant it. I don’t like to drink alone, that’s all.”

“Didn’t think a dame as pretty as you’d ever be _alone_.”

She opens the door for him and smiles wistfully at the grey sky.

“You would be surprised.”


End file.
